Tyler ran a hand through his hair and let out a long, sad sigh when he thought back of that night. The night she had offered herself to him, asking him to lay with her and make love to her. What if he had taken her up on her offer? What if he had not refused her her plea for feeling alive again? Would she still have been here? Or would she still have disappeared three days after the doors had opened again?
It had been three months since Judgment Day, since the old world had seized to exist. And it had been two months since she had disappeared. The only consolation he had was that one day he would see her again. It would be on the day John would assign him to protect her. Something he had already been doing since the other Tyler had died. Sometimes in a subtle manner, sometimes in a harsh way.
The other Tyler had always loved her. He knew because he did too. She had been the one who had tried to protect him from the other Tyler, who had made him feel welcome in her family and who had taught him everything she knew that could help him in the future.
That was why he had stepped back when she had come on to him so strongly. She was everything to him and if he had given into her pleading, nothing would ever have been the same between them again. Where he had felt no remorse for taking advantage of the situation with Nikki, he had not been able to do that to Sarah.
He knew that one day he would make Lieutenant General in John's Resistance, but it didn't take away the feeling of her being way out of his league. She was John's mother, the mother of the future. Had the other Tyler struggled with the same? Was that why she had disappeared from their lives in another time?

Catherine looked at the people gathered in the room to find out who had spoken out against her plan of razing the servo-drone factory to the ground. A oddly familiar looking woman stepped forward and Catherine could swear that she had seen her somewhere before.
"I've seen what those metal motherfuckers can do," the woman stated. "They can't be reasoned with. They can't be bargained with. All they know is death and destruction... So if you send these people in without educating them about the enemy first, you will send them to a most certain death."
An icy shiver ran up and down Catherine's spine when she remembered where she had seen this woman before. Skynet had shown her a picture of this woman when it had insisted onp laying the Face Game with her. Who was this woman? And what did she know about Skynet and the machines?
"And you are?" Catherine asked sternly after she had regained her composure.
The face of the woman showed a faint, crooked smile before she answered: "My name is Sarah... Sarah Baum."
"And what do you know about these things?" was Catherine's second question.
"More than I would have ever liked to know," the woman named Sarah Baum answered.
"Were you involved in the development of Skynet or one of its machines?"
Sarah shook her head wearily: "It's complicated."
"Then uncomplicate it for us," Catherine urged while she looked at all in the room.
"All in good time," Sarah stated simply as she put her hands into the pockets of her dirty, black cargo pants.

Ethan Scottsdale looked up from his textbook when his friend returned from the meeting. He had been a third year med student when the world had ended so suddenly, visiting with his family on the day it started to rain missiles.
"How are you?" He asked slowly.
"I can't believe those morons. They have no idea what they're up against and yet they insist to go into battle head first... Other than that, I've never been better," the woman growled, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
Two months ago he had been searching the streets and ruins for clothes and food when he had seen this woman take on a big machine on tracks with only a shotgun. He cherished a deep admiration for her because, despite the odds being against her, she had been victorious. Like she had exactly known what she was doing, fuelled to fight by her injuries.
After destroying the machine, she had collapsed into murky puddles of rain and ash. Ethan had rushed over and had done what he had been studying to do: he had acted like a medic by doing a quick evaluation of her wounds. After establishing the woman could still travel, he had taken her with him to his 'pocket', a safe place where survivors of that hellish day in April lived.
"I'm sorry to hear that they didn't want to listen to you, Sarah," he mumbled while turning his attention back to his textbook.

Tyler looked from Robin to John: "We need to go back to L.A., John. You know that as well as I do."
"But what about mom?" John countered.
"We'll see her again," Tyler said firmly, sounding more convinced than he actually felt.
"How the fuck would you know that? Because the other Tyler told you so?" John growled. "Have I got news for you, pal. This is not the future the other Tyler told us about. It has changed and for all we know she could be laying dead in a ditch somewhere."
"She's alive and kicking metal ass. Like we should be doing right now if it wasn't for you continuously stalling on our leave," Tyler growled, feeling his temper rise slowly.
"You don't know if she is alive or dead," John seethed. "You think you know everything, but you know shit."
"Maybe so," Tyler shrugged his shoulders. "In that case call it a gut feeling then that I think she's still alive and quite possibly raising hell."
"This isn't your future, Tyler," John remarked angrily. "Whatever the other Tyler has said to us, it no longer exists."
"Yeah, it still does. The future will always exist, John. It's inevitable.
"You're a fucking dreamer, TJ. You always was and you always will be. Everthing's changed," John hissed. "But if you're too stubborn or blind to see it, that's your problem, not mine. You can act the hopeless romantic all you want by believing that one day she will return to your side all you want. This is the real world, Tyler. Wake up and see that it's hell."
"I know it is hell, John," Tyler growled, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side.
"Oh really. Well, then don't come crying when it turns out she isn't coming back... You had your chance and you blew it."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Tyler asked darkly.
"Just because you turned her down and now regret it doesn't mean that she's coming back and will give you a second chance."
"I did the right thing, John," Tyler grumbled, annoyed that John had the nerve to throw that back in his face along with the constant reminding of the other Tyler.
John laughed mockingly: "No, you didn't... You chickened out when it turned out that your fantasy could become a reality... You're a fucking coward and you know it."
Tyler glared at John and felt close to strangling him: "I did the honorable thing. Don't deny that you would have wanted to kill me if I had taken advantage of her while she was in an emotional and fragile state of mind."

Skynet ran its daily system check and the pale bluish face on the wall screen smirked when it concluded that the production of its army was right on schedule. It knew that it would need an army of machines to impose its reign over the world. Especially if those inferior creatures would start to overcome their initial shock and would start putting together some form of resistance. It was in control now.
It looked at "Mother" again and realized that in spite of its technological knowledge her series would be something for the future. Self-awareness had come with the ability of thinking, and Skynet loved to think and dared itself to give answers to the most complicated question it could think of. A lot could be explained with logics, except for humans. Humans weren't logical at all. They were capable of doing stupid, irrational things.
If it wanted to win this impending war it would need an edge, something the humans would not easily identify as an enemy. It needed an infiltrator, a human-like machine that would fool those backward humans into thinking it was one of them before striking with deadly efficiency. Slowly it went through all the blueprints already in its system but it could not find a suitable model to start out with.
The others? appeared on the screen
"Destroyed," Catherine Weaver's answer was short and simple.
So none of the former future is left?
"None."
It was a minor setback and nothing Skynet could not overcome. If one of the older infiltrators had not been destroyed during its attack on those inferior useless creatures called humans, it would have been the ultimate advantage for the time being.
Why is there no blueprint of one of the models in my system?
"Because the humans would have stopped the project. They would have suspected something."
Why?
"They call it a hunch, a gut feeling. I haven't learned what that is."
It looked at her again. She was the perfect infiltrator but not its to command yet and she was too valuable to send out into the field to be sacrificed. Skynet had other plans for her.
Content with its plan to built an infiltration unit, Skynet began to draw up a list of what it would need for this project to be successful. After completing the list, it calculated the time it would need to have the first infiltrator ready. In one year, eleven months, eight days, sixteen hours, twenty-two minutes and forty-six seconds the first infiltration unit would be ready.

Chapter 4: The Surviving Are Left To Fend For Themselves

Chapter 6: All Standard Procedure